The Institute of Balkan Studies and Centre of Thracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences A. Yu Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University and Kharkiv State Academy of Culture organize an international scholarly conference Modern and contemporary culture: Research, heritage protection, socialization. It will be held on November 23 and 24, 2023 online via Zoom. The working languages are Bulgarian, Ukrainian and English.

Please submit your paper proposal until October 23, 2023 at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The proposal must include topic of the paper (in Bulgarian and English or in Ukrainian and English) and an abstract (up to 300 words).

Approved applications will be announced by November 1, 2023.

The conference proceedings will be published in a refereed edition after double anonymous review.

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On April 24, 2023, at the UNESCO House in Paris the photo documentary exhibition Le cœur de la Bulgarie. Exposition du monastère de Rila pour l'UNESCO / The Heart of Bulgaria. Rila Monastery Exhibition for UNESCO was opened. The exhibition is prepared by a team of the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Tracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IBSCT-BAS) and is supported by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science under the National Scientific Programme "Bulgarian Studies". The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the inscription of the Rila Monastery in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The official opening of the exhibition was attended by Mrs. Zornitza Grekova, Deputy Permanent Delegate of Bulgaria to UNESCO, Prof. Dr. Roumiana Il. Preshlenova, Director of the IBSCT-BAS and Assist. Prof. Dr. Alexandra Milanova, academic coordinator of the IBSCT-BAS. With the blessing of Bishop Evlogius of Adrianople, Abbot of the Rila Monastery, the Monastery was represented by Archpriest Ivan Karageorgiev - a priest from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church Municipality "Saint Patriarch Euthymius of Tarnovo" in Paris. The guest of honor at the event was Mr. Ernesto Ottone, Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO, who welcomed the initiative and congratulated Bulgaria for its effective contribution to the overall work of UNESCO. Guests at the opening were representatives of the diplomatic corps in Paris, employees of the UNESCO Secretariat and the World Heritage Center, citizens and guests of the French capital.

The exhibition is organized under the patronage of the National Commission of the Republic of Bulgaria for UNESCO with the courtesy of the Rila Monastery, the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Bulgaria to UNESCO, and the State Cultural Institute at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria.

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On April 25, 2023, Prof. Yura Konstantinova delivered the 7th Gunnar Herring lecture, organized by the Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna. Prof. Nenad Stefanov from the Humboldt University in Berlin was the respondent of the lecture, dedicated to the Bulgarian ideas about Greece and the Greeks. The event, which took place in the auditorium of the archive of the University of Vienna, was attended by members of the academic community, representatives of the embassies of Bulgaria and Greece in Austria, students and citizens.

The Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IBSCT-BAS) is pleased to invite you to the lecture of Assoc. Prof. Simeon Simeonov, PhD The Balkan odyssey of Francisco de Miranda and the birth of the idea of Latin American independence. The event is organized in pursuance to Art. 18 (17) of the Annex to the Regulations of the Scientific Council of the IBSCT-BAS regarding terms and conditions for acquiring scientific degrees and for holding academic positions.

The lecture will be held on May 2, 2023 (Tuesday) at 16:00 at the IBSCT-BAS (Moskovska Street No. 45).

We are looking forward to welcoming you!

From April 18 to 20, 2023, the Third National Annual Scholarly Conference of the Center for Excellence "Heritage BG" was held in hall 19 of the Prince's Palace. Seven researchers from the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology participated in the event. The conference was opened by Prof. Alexandre Kostov, Dr. habil., Corresponding Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences who deliver a report entitled "Towards the modernization of health system in the Balkans at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century: Outpatient medical care". Six more presentations of participants in the "Unknown Balkans" project treated new and poorly researched scholarly issues. Those reports were delivered by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zlatomira Gerdzhikova, Assist. Prof. Dr. Vesela Atanasova, Assist. Prof. Dr. Adriana Serbova, Assist. Prof. Dr. Samuil Kamburov, Assist. Prof. Dr. Ivaylo Nachev, and Eli Filipova, PhD student. All papers were followed by interesting and fruitful discussions.

More about the reports is available here.

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On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the inscription of the Rila Monastery in the UNESCO World Heritage List, from April 21 to 27, 2023, the photo documentary exhibition Le cœur de la Bulgarie. Exposition du monastère de Rila pour l'UNESCO / The Heart of Bulgaria. Rila Monastery Exhibition for UNESCO will be presented at the UNESCO House in Paris. The exhibition is prepared by a team of the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Tracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and is supported by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science under the National Scientific Programme "Bulgarian Studies".

The exhibition is organized under the patronage of the National Commission of the Republic of Bulgaria for UNESCO with the courtesy of the Rila Monastery, the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Bulgaria to UNESCO, and the State Cultural Institute at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria.

The official opening will take place on April 24, 2023 (Monday) at 12.30 at the UNESCO House in Paris (7 place de Fontenoy, 75007 Paris).

We are looking forward to welcoming you.

The scholarly forum is organized by the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Tracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences under the project "The Vocabulary of Constantine of Preslav's Uchitel'noe evangelie ('Didactic Gospel'): Old Bulgarian-Greek and Greek-Old Bulgarian Word Indices", funded by the Bulgarian National Science Fund (agreement No. KP-06-H50/2). Partner in this event is the Regional History Museum - Sofia.

35 prominent scholars from Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and the Czech Republic will participate, as well as young researchers from Bulgaria, Austria and Croatia.

The conference program is available on the project website: https://uchitelnoevangelie.eu/sabitiya/

The official opening of the conference is on April 25, 2023 at 17h00 at Hall 1 of the Serdika Ancient Cultural and Communication Complex.

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The purpose of this conference is to emphasize the problem of “otherness” in the context of Church history. In the Bible, the Saviour defines two groups, those “blessed by My Father”, who will inherit the Kingdom prepared for them “since the creation of the world” (Matt. 25: 34-40), and the “cursed”, who will be sent to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25: 41-46). The Lord reveals himself only to “the pure in heart” (Matt. 5:8).
Besides the identification of otherness, the Church prescribes the recipe for the birth of the “new” man: repentance. According to the ecclesiastic philosophers, the difference between righteous and sinners (between “us” and “them”) has been established according to the divine design of Creation.

The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers with common interests in a discussion on several leading questions: where are the categories “us” and “them” situated; who are the “others”; how is their image constructed.

The international conference is open to specialists from different fields: historians, culturologists, theologians, art historians, archivists, philologists, philosophers, etc. The conference will be held in Sofia (Bulgaria) on 8-9 November 2023. Online participation will be very welcomed.

The main topics are the following:

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The Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IBSCT-BAS) is pleased to invite you to the public lecture of Kaloyan Konstantinov (IBSCT-BAS) Forge of Myths: The 'Islamic' Revolution in Iran.

The event is organised under the initiative Every Second Tuesday and will be held on April 11, 2023 (Tuesday) at 17:00 at the IBSCT-BAS (Moskovska Street No. 45).

We are looking forward to welcoming you!

On April 12, 2023 (Wednesday) at 17:00 at the Regional History Museum in Sofia, Retrocafe hall (2nd floor), Banski Square No. 1, the collective monograph MIRABILIA: TIMES, SPACES, MYTHS (Studia balkanica 36 ) will be presented. Compilers and editors: Lozanova-Stancheva, V. and Fol, V. The book is a result of the third interdisciplinary conference on the same topic, held on June 8-9, 2021 at the American Research Center in Sofia (ARCS) and with its courtesy and partnership.

The collective monograph is aimed at research from various points of view, methodology and applying different scholarly tools of the mirabilia-myth relationship in diverse spaces and times. The main goal is to clarify the mechanisms of construction of the mirabilia phenomenon by means of the fundamental categories of time – space – myth in their dynamic interconnection. The focus is on the genesis of myths, their temporal and spatial dimensions in the context of the categories "miracles" and "miraculous". The papers trace the anatomy and evolution of these categories, as well as their metaphorical metamorphoses in sacred and profane contexts. The cultural categories of "miracles" and "myths" with an emphasis on their spatio-temporal parameters are interpreted in their dynamic relationships and functional characteristics in relation to various fields of humanities, such as religion and mythology, literature, politics and language in different historical eras.

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We are pleased to invite you to the next meeting of the "Unknown Balkans" Discussion Club, which will be held on April 10, 2023. Prof. Raia Zaimova, Dr. habil. and Prof. Raymon Detrez, PhD will discuss the topic "European modernity and Bulgarian historiography of the 18th and the 19th century".

The event will be held on April 10, 2023 at 16:00 at the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Tracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Moskovska Street No 45 and online via  Zoom platform: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82869799233. The discussion is open to everyone.

The "Unknown Balkans" Discussion Club is organized under the project Building a supreme achievements centre "Heritage BG".

Annotation in Bulgarian

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On March 29, 2023, the Department of History and Ethnology of the Faculty of Classical Studies and Humanities of the Democritus University of Thrace in Komotini honored Prof. Dr. Roumiana Ilieva Preshlenova, Director of the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Tracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, with the distinction doctor honoris causa for her contribution to the development of the Balkan Studies and Bulgarian-Greek scholarly cooperation. The ceremony was preceded by a scholarly meeting on the topic "Balkan culture in the age of modernity" with participation of Bulgarian and Greek scholars. The event was attended by teachers and students, as well as a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria Mr. Valentin Pavlov, counsellor at the Consulate General of the Republic of Bulgaria in Thessaloniki.

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